


all your dead unfinished selves

by impossiblewanderings



Category: Red Dead Redemption (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Chapter 2: Horseshoe Overlook (Red Dead Redemption 2), Hurt/Comfort, in exchange for your sweeping grand inevitable tragedy, in this trying time, may I offer you a fragmented slow-burning tragedy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-20
Updated: 2021-01-20
Packaged: 2021-03-18 13:29:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28867806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/impossiblewanderings/pseuds/impossiblewanderings
Summary: Leviticus Cornwall, fed up with being made to look a fool by a group of no-account outlaws, does what comes natural to any rich man. In the aftermath, Arthur struggles to hold his family together. And on the banks of the Dakota, another man stands waiting.
Relationships: Arthur Morgan & Charles Smith, Arthur Morgan & Dutch van der Linde, Arthur Morgan & Van der Linde Gang, Hosea Matthews & Arthur Morgan, John Marston & Arthur Morgan, Sadie Adler & Dutch van der Linde
Comments: 5
Kudos: 13





	all your dead unfinished selves

**PROLOGUE**

* * *

_ I _ _ ’ve seen your true face: the back of your head. If you were walking away, keep walking. _

Birds Hover the Trampled Field, Richard Silken

* * *

On the banks of the Dakota, a man stands waiting. 

At first glance you might take him for a foreigner, some scion of minor European nobility come to taste the wildness of Thoreau and Miller’s America. He is dressed for the theatre, or perhaps a funeral. His mustaches are waxed and his fingernails kept short and clean.

At second glance, you might notice that his hat is unbrushed, his coat dusty, the heels of his dress shoes worn down, as though he had been a long time walking the roads of the world. That he has no gun or horse, has made no camp, carries no lock box or satchel. That he seems oddly familiar, as though you might have passed him once on the street, or seen his likeness in a newspaper. 

You wonder how he came to be standing here, this strange man, amid a rough tangle of rocks and brush with the cliff at his back. It would be near impossible for a goat to navigate this slope without doing itself harm, let alone a man on foot. 

He has the look of an accountant, now that you come to think of it, so far as any man might begin to resemble his profession after years of steady application. At least, he hasn’t the starry-eyed gaze of one of Evelyn Miller’s disciples. His eyes skip over the river, the trees, the bluffs, the birds in the sky, as though he were keeping a tally of what they had cost to put there, and who should be brought to account for it. 

The river itself is swollen from the recent bad weather and flowing fast, rust brown and poked through with broken branches. On a still evening like this you can hear the faint rumble of Cumberland Falls, churning water and debris into foam like some great watermill.

Little waves lick and nibble eagerly at the man’s feet. He takes out his pocket watch and consults it for a moment, then turns upstream with a calm, expectant air, as though anticipating a train. 

The maddening thing about it is the dark shape of him against the pale waters is one you’re sure you recognise. All the sharp, spare angles from the soles of his boots to the top of his hat spell out a name, and it’s caught under your tongue, scratching at your throat just out of reach.

Of course, there is no point to any of this. All the time that you have spent watching him and wondering about him has been wasted.

The only thing you ought to have been asking yourself was what, or who, he was waiting for.

**Author's Note:**

> RDR2 made my 2020 bearable and dragged me kicking and screaming back into fandom. This fic truly is the height of self-indulgence, as well as an attempt to awaken the ghost of my motivated writing self. Let's see how it goes!


End file.
